Judge your patient: ethically based provocative techniques

Boszormenyi- Nagy gave us the gift of looking at the ethical dimension of our patient’s lives. Ethics has to do with judgment. Of discerning between what is ethically right and what is ethically wrong in a relationship. Can therapists be judgmental? Can therapist use criticism, provocation, shame, guilt and intimidation in therapy? Most therapist will probably disapprove of such use. But in this presentation I want to suggest otherwise. I want to suggest that therapists need to grow and develop an ethical backbone. I want to suggest that an ethical backbone can actually help therapist use techniques that are more powerful in moving patients forward. When therapists do not develop an established ethical stance, their judgment will come from their emotions or identifications with one family member or another. When therapist develop a deep ethical stance, their judgments come from a very different place. We can say that they earned their entitlement to use judgment, criticism and guilt in therapy. The use of provocative techniques from an ethical stance cannot be used in order to push patients to do what their spouse, their parents, their children, their teachers or their therapist wants them to do. It can only be used in order to push clients to relate in ways which are more and more ethical towards themselves and others. In this workshop I will demonstrate how therapists can think about ethics and how they can use different kinds of provocative techniques in order to push clients to earn worthiness, or entitlement.